Ron Paul: End the Welfare-Warfare State!

Transcript

Jan Mickelson: Good morning, friends. Welcome to our Friday morning get together, it’s the first week of the Weekend Iowa State Fair, and today is the day right before the famous, or infamous, straw poll that will be held tomorrow in Ames. And we have all of the qualified presidential candidates who will either be on the ballot or are going to be filling in the blanks tomorrow. And we have, I think right now in the studio with us, the real estate tycoon of Ames who paid the most for his plot at the Iowa state fair. Good morning, Dr. Paul.

Ron Paul: Good morning, it’s nice to be with you.

Jan Mickelson: Thank you for coming by. You had a vigorous night last night.

Ron Paul: Yes, it was very busy.

Jan Mickelson: I think Rick Santorum was a pacifist until last night, but you got under his skin. It looked like he was ready…

Ron Paul: He’s ready to go to war.

Jan Mickelson: He will be with us later and we have, probably fortunately for both of us, separated you with a decent time interval, so you won’t be able to come to blows again.

Ron Paul: But we’ve talked a little bit after the debate last night.

Jan Mickelson: Was it shorter words or longer words?

Ron Paul: No, I tried to make it very cordial because I wanted to really try to understand his explanation of what happened in 1953. You just can’t isolate things from the years you want. And it was a very decent conversation but we didn’t resolve the differences. There is a big difference about understanding history and knowing what happened in 1953 versus what happened in 1979 in Iran.

Jan Mickelson: Well, in case people are wondering what we’re talking about – you need to use your earphones over there, Dr. Paul, in order to hear this sound bite – but this is the moment from last night’s confrontation.

Rick Santorum: Anyone that suggests that Iran is not a threat to this country, is not a threat to the stability to the Middle East, is obviously not seeing the world very clearly. He sees it exactly the way that Barack Obama sees it, that we have to go around and apologize for the fact that we’ve gone out and exerted our influence to create freedom around the world. I don’t apologize for that.

Jan Mickelson: Alright, and you didn’t get a chance to follow up a lot on that, so I’d like you to extend and, if you’d like, amend your remarks.

Ron Paul: I don’t believe that we can extend our freedom through guns and bombs. We should be able to extend our goodness through influence by setting a good standard. But this idea that we can go in and take over this country and impose our will on them … but this idea that Iran is a horrible threat to the world, they haven’t invaded a border country in hundreds of years, that’s not part of their culture. And besides, they really are a third-world nation in spite of the fact that they have oil. Oil is a big deal over there, but like I mentioned in the debate, they don’t even produce enough gasoline, they have to import gasoline. So for us to punish and try to overthrow their particular government because we don’t like their government … We put embargos and say they can’t even import gasoline, which requires military force to do this, we’re trying to punish them. But we did that for 10 years against Iraq, and then we had a resolution that said we want regime change. But that’s what senator Santorum had; his resolution was essentially the same thing, it was preparation for war. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, now that he’s left the DOD, said somebody has to have their head examined if they think that we need to start another war. So this is the Secretary of Defense who has led the charge over there, and he said that we’re having too much and therefore he was talking down at least going into Libya. So the sentiment is changing, I made the big point that these wars are costing us trillions of dollars, taking care of our veterans now will cost many, many trillions of dollars over the next 20, 30 years. It’s a tragedy and I’d like to stop it.

Jan Mickelson: Alright, how?

Ron Paul: I say bring them home as soon as you can. Send the ships over, it would send the message around the world that we are not going to be the antagonist, we’re not going to occupy, we’re stopping all the drone bombings of the many, many countries. Dennis Blair, who was in charge of the CIA and intelligence services, when he ordered a lot of these bombs, said they’re not effective. Now that he’s out of office, he declares that they’re not effective at all and too many civilians get killed, which just means every time you kill a civilian or anybody, you just develop more enemies. So this whole idea that we’re going to eliminate the Taliban by just killing more of them, every time you kill one, you probably create 3 or 4 new ones who hate us for us doing it. What would we do if somebody did that to us over here? American people would not tolerate it. Just think if China got to that point where they would do this to us, have troops on our land and have bases on our land and take our oil and drop bombs on us and kill our civilians; I do not understand why we can’t put ourselves in their shoes and say how would we react and we would not react gracefully.

Jan Mickelson: We understand the psychology of this very well, Dr. Paul, because the logic is we were attacked in 9/11 and we are victims and therefore we are virtuous in whatever we do. And that’s psychology works and we were indeed attacked and radical Islam was behind those attacks.

Ron Paul: I agree to a point on that, but I gave a speech early on in this decade about how we got started into these wars, and I think it was entitled, “Keep your eye on the target”. Who is the target? Maybe 50 or 100 Al-Qaida that were involved, very few Al-Qaida were actually involve. So I voted for the authority to go get Bin Laden, but we have to realize that 15 of those individuals came from Saudi Arabia, it made more sense to overthrow the Saudi government than it did to go to Iraq; it made no sense. There were no Al-Qaida in Iraq. Iraq was strongly opposed to the Al-Qaida, and they were strongly opposed to the Iranians. So we threw that government out and now we have a government allied with the Iranians and the Taliban have never sought to come here to kill us, they are people who are defending their homeland and they do this because their main motivation is they do not want occupation by any foreigners and they did it against the Soviets and they’re doing it against us. It was in the plan of Bin Laden, he explicitly wrote this down. He says he wants to bog the Americans down in this region, he wants to bankrupt our country and he wants to get dissension in America arguing over this rule. So right now, in his grave, he’s probably laughing at us because he achieved what he sought to do, and I think we’re foolish for following this policy that has satisfied so many of his goals.

Jan Mickelson: I was in the audience last night in the cheap seats way up in the nose-bleed section, watching the confrontation. And I was surrounded by people who had picked their own candidates. And when you were talking about this, people were just really upset at what you were saying, saying, “Hey, this guy is just an isolationist. This is a disaster”. And you’ve been called over and over, Pat Buchanan used to call himself a non-interventionist, how would you describe yourself when it comes to American foreign policy?

Ron Paul: Well, I’m a non-interventionist and I believe in non-intervention, that’s quite a bit different from isolation. Pat and I are good friends but we do have some disagreements, because he tends to believe that we should have protectionism and tariffs and protect our trade. I’m a free trader, I want to be open. And last night I didn’t get to mention that we should be trading with, not embargoing, Cuba. So I do believe that we should be very much engaged in the world in peaceful matters and really travel and be friends with as many people as possible. That’s what the constitution permits us to do and it’s also what the founders advised; non-entangling alliance, don’t get involved in internal affairs of other nations. On those points, of course, Pat and I do agree. But no, not interventionism is not isolationism if you believe in freedom of movement and freedom of trade, because we’re doing much better with China today than we were in the 1950s when we were fighting and killing each other, and we’re doing much better with the Vietnamese now even after the tragedy of the 1960s. We trade with them and travel there and invest over there. So much more is achieved in peaceful trade than it is with war. War is a loser.

Jan Mickelson: Maybe that’s not a good argument, Dr. Paul, when you make a reference to China in one respect. We are not killing each other anymore obviously, except the proxy wars in Korea. But now the former communist China, now that they’ve turned capitalist, are eating our lunch. So maybe we should go back to shooting them.

Ron Paul: Maybe we could learn from them. The saying was that we had to win in Vietnam because there would be a domino effect. We lost in Vietnam and they’ve become more westernized and they’ve become our bankers. So it is a rater ironic twist of the events.

Jan Mickelson: Look, we’ll come back here in a moment as we’re broadcasting live from the Iowa state fair. You got us to the next level, the next round. Your major area of expertise has been, over the years, areas dealing with banking and money, and those are the issues that are besetting the economy right now, and those are the issues that propelled you to popularity amongst some of the younger generation. People are actually reading the constitution, they’re reading the federalist papers, they’re reading the history of where did that Federal Reserve thing come from to begin with. During the last election cycle people – and I hate to remind you, you know how this worked – I mean, last time when you’d bring up some of these things during the debates, the people in almost the entire group up there on the dais would turn and look at you like, “Hey, where did this wacko come from”. Now, most of these people are using your language, your description and your evaluation of the weakness of the dollar, and now everybody sounds like Ron Paul. We’ll talk about that in just a moment, as we’re broadcasting live from the Iowa state fair. Broadcasting live from the Iowa state fair, I’m Jan Mickelson, here in the studio with us is Dr. Paul. Congressman Paul is here, he’s a Texas congressman who has run for president, now this is second time at it. And now he’s son is a senator from Kentucky, you’ve got to be really proud of the kid.

Ron Paul: We sure are, he’s done a very good job and he’s pretty active in the Senate already, and he’s very aggressive.

Jan Mickelson: He’s already made a (?) for himself, like father, like sun, eh?

Ron Paul: Well, he’s doing a very good job.

Jan Mickelson: I gave you your chance to harass your kid, and you neglected it, you need some kid harassment lessons. Let’s go back to what we were talking about right before the break here, because my son has become an expert on metal, he’s a gold broker, and he was telling me the other day, “It doesn’t make any difference what these guys do, it’s too late, we’re going to default. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. There’s not enough money in the universe, and the whole country world(?) is subsidizing the United States economy. And they’re sick of it and they’re not going to do it anymore, we’re going to have to live within our own means.” As Erickson from the Debt Committee said, “We can’t grow our way out of this hole, and we cannot tax our way out of this hole”. And if the political class, as you saw last night, is frozen and locked into two different world views. Even if you were all on the same page, you won’t be able to do the needed reforms. So this whole system is likely to end up down around our ankles. Do you agree with his pessimistic assessment?

Ron Paul: He must have been reading the same literature you’ve been reading. No, I agree with him, and I’ve said things very similarly. The default comes and it’s usually self evident once a country has to borrow more than 40% of what they spend. And of course, we’re at 42%, 43%, we have to borrow that just for our spending habits.

Jan Mickelson: One thing is to borrow money for infrastructure or to wage a real war or to build something. We’re not doing that.

Ron Paul: Well, there would be three categories, war is the worst place, this idea that war gets you out of depressions that’s absolutely wrong.

Jan Mickelson: No, I wasn’t implying that.

Ron Paul: But the idea of spending on war versus infrastructure, infrastructure is much better. But even when government spends on infrastructure, it’s not market oriented, you still want it to be very local government or private companies and individuals spending the money. But the infrastructure is certainly not nearly as damaging as war spending.

Jan Mickelson: I agree, but we are borrowing the money to pay for operating expenses, for consumables.

Ron Paul: Yea, we borrow to pay the interest on what we’ve already borrowed. But the question on this default; countries like ours will not default by not paying the bills and paying the interest. But the default I believe is inevitable and they know it, too, and Bernanke knows it, and the only way they can default is by debasing the currency. So if you can make your dollar worth 50 cents on the dollar and it covers that in two years, you’ve cut your real debt in half. And that’s what they’re doing, that’s why they’re desperately printing the money, they just wished the inflation would come back faster and devalue the currency faster. But that is dishonest, it’s bad economics, it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral, and leads to things being very harmful.

Jan Mickelson: And at the end of the day, this is what the Rheine Republican did; after World War I the Germans were given this huge reparation bill, and they said, “Oh okay, we’ll just pay you with fake money”, and they inflated their currency out of existence.

Ron Paul: They paid it off with bad currency.

Jan Mickelson: Yea, so this is what’s happened with the continental dollar, they just inflated the currency out of existence, they tried to make it illegal to refuse the continental dollar, even locked up the first generation of Americans when they wouldn’t accept it, they would literally go running from the room rather than be paid with the continental dollar.

Ron Paul: That’s right, legal tender laws don’t work. Right now, legal tender laws say that you can only use a Federal Reserve note as legal tender, and nobody can define a Federal Reserve note, they can’t define a dollar. But the markets are telling us what real money is, because they’re getting skittish and worried and they’re pumping a lot of money into gold coins.

Jan Mickelson: You asked the Fed chairman, Bernanke, the other day, “Is gold money?” I have the sound bite but I won’t play it, and he said, “Well, it’s a commodity.”

Ron Paul: He called it an asset, but he said it was not money.

Jan Mickelson: The guy who’s in charge of our money supply says that the thing that our constitution defines as money, gold and silver, is not money.

Ron Paul: Yea, and if I had had more time, I would have quizzed him on that, and asked, “Does that mean you are personally repealing the constitution? Who got rid of this thing that says nothing but gold and silver can be used as legal tender?” And he personally didn’t do it, because he’s not been around for a long time, but the Federal Reserve System has done it, but he’s endorsing that idea. Of course, I challenged him on the idea: “If it’s not money, why do central banks hold gold?” And matter of fact, the stronger countries buy gold. We’re getting poorer, China is getting richer and they’re buying up the gold.

Jan Mickelson: And he went all (?) on you and said “tradition”.

Ron Paul: Tradition. Yea, but the tradition that I’m defending is a lot longer tradition than his.

Jan Mickelson: Well, it’s also legally defined that way by the constitution: the states can require nothing but gold and silver in repayment of debt.

Ron Paul: And the founders understood it, they had the problem with the continental dollar, they outlawed emitting bills of credit, which is paper money, there’s no good history to show paper money lasts for a very long period of time. I would say this 40 years, from 1971 up until now, is exceptionally long for a purely fiat currency. And the amazing thing about what we’re dealing with is this is a worldwide phenomenon. Because of our military strength and our wealth, people were willing to honor and they still do to a degree; they still buy our treasury bills and the dollar hasn’t totally collapsed. But it’s worldwide, they took these dollars and gave us goods and they put those dollars in their bank as their reserves and they inflated their economies. So this is a big deal and this will have to be corrected.

Jan Mickelson: “Have to be corrected”, is such a nice easy phrase. How? I mean, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a soft landing, it doesn’t look like the political class is capable of dealing with this. I’ll give you an example; just yesterday one of the guys on the platform last night was Mitt Romney and he was down here at the fair standing on a bail of straw, and some leftist activists tried to mug him, and they tried to say, “How are you going to guarantee that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not touched, and our benefits will not be reduced?” Well, nobody can say that with any honesty and integrity because the money isn’t there.

Ron Paul: They’d be reduced by getting money that has no value.

Jan Mickelson: But those people were jumping up and down and were angry, implying, “The only the only reason why you’re not able to pay those bills and our entitlements, is because you won’t tax those evil corporations”.

Ron Paul: You know, a lot of times I’m asked who is responsible for that, and a lot of Republicans say, “It’s all Obama’s fault”. But I expand the blame because sometimes I’ll include the people, and I’m thinking about people like you were just describing. The people demand these programs and they were complacent for these many, many years as long as they got their checks and their benefits and they twisted the definition of entitlement to be a right. I mean, that is the real problem. But what is happening though now is there’s a rebellion going on through this Tea Party Movement, people are saying, “We’re sick and tired of paying it, and debt is a big problem”, but talking about a soft landing, it’s going to be very, very difficult if we continue to do what we’re doing and what we’ve been doing for the last 4 years, we’re going to guarantee a hard landing like what happened in Germany with runaway inflation

Jan Mickelson: The Chinese say our money is junk, the American dollar is junk.

Ron Paul: But they’re still taking it, to a degree.

Ron Paul: They’re sort of stuck. They’ve hugged us and we have hugged them, they’ve got this insatious relationship, this (?) baby relationship with us and them. And if we go down, their money reserve goes down they don’t have a backed currency either, and they go down too.

Ron Paul: They have 1.2 trillion dollars, but they’re starting to buy a little less and they’re starting to spend more. Now when we’re over in Afghanistan wasting money and borrowing the money to fight these wars, what are they doing? They’re actually investing in the infrastructure and in natural resources in countries like Afghanistan and Iran.

Jan Mickelson: And in Africa. They’re going to own everything that’s not bailed down, they’re out buying assets and commodities while we’re waging war and blowing up commodities.

Ron Paul: I think we taught them too well about capitalism. We need to reverse this and now we’re dependent.

Jan Mickelson: Maybe we should send them Paul Krugman, and say, “Hey, listen to this guy”, and send him on an extended vacation. “Listen to this guy for a while.”

Ron Paul: There you go, that’s a great idea. A lot of times when we start these new countries and we’re going to give them our way of living, we teach them how to have a central bank, and an IRS and an EPA. And that’s what we do, we go over there and we teach them these things, and that’s exporting the greatness of America.

Jan Mickelson: Yea, we learnt that from the Indians because they gave us tobacco. Hey, we can beat these white men, but we can at least rot their lungs. What are we going to do to the Chinese?

Ron Paul: I don’t know, something will have to give, we can’t continue this way. And what has to happen is we have to liquidate the debt and it’s only a matter of time and how.

Jan Mickelson: Now you talked about that last night. You talked about how we could liquidate part of the debt, by saying that some of the interest is money that is based upon an illusion. Walk us through that.

Ron Paul: Are we talking about the Federal Reserve?

Jan Mickelson: Yes.

Ron Paul: I think we pay the Federal Reserve interest because they hold 1.6 trillion dollars of debt. But it’s not real debt, that is one place where you can say you owe it to yourself, why don’t we just cancel that out?

Jan Mickelson: Is that debt different than the bonds that are held by China?

Ron Paul: Oh yea, they’re different. Matter of fact, it would build the strength of the dollar because then we would be paying less to the Fed and we would have …

Jan Mickelson: If we do that, would the Fed have less cash reserves to loan to the business people?

Ron Paul: Yea, but from my viewpoint, that wouldn’t hurt. That’s not what they should be doing, because that’s how we magnified our problem. They got us into it because they were managing the money supply poorly, interest rates were too low for too long, and then we get into trouble so what did he do? He practically tripled the size of the monetary base. So if we had little less leeway … but it really wouldn’t stop them, unfortunately. That proposal I have is not a solution, it was a temporary help dealing with the debt limit. Because under the current situation, they can still print money, unlimited amounts of money, and buy more treasury bills. So they wouldn’t be restrained like they should be.

Jan Mickelson: There are a lot of moral issues, the foreign policy issue, those are big deals, and we could probably argue about some of those things. But the money issue and the economy issue literally is an existential issue for our culture, isn’t it?

Ron Paul: Absolutely, and history shows that there’s a tendency always for governments to abuse the monetary system, that’s why some of us argue the case for privatizing it and letting the market decide it, that’s what Hayek’s position is. But even in ancient times when they fought wars, they inflated by debasing the currency or clipping the coins and then eventually they destroyed the value of the currency.

Jan Mickelson: That’s right, that’s why the coins had the ridges on them.

Ron Paul: That’s right, to see if they clipped the coins.

Jan Mickelson: Yea, so nobody could shave the edges, and if anybody did, they could say, “Hey, somebody’s being messing with our currency”.

Ron Paul: They’ve been doing it for a long time and they will continue to do it as long as the people have a high demand, they want the spending and we’ve run out of tax revenues, so we’re going to borrow and print.

Jan Mickelson: So you’re basically saying there’s a circular argument here: you can’t have an honest currency without an honest electorate, and you can’t have an honest electorate without an honest currency. Which comes first, the chick or the egg?

Ron Paul: Well, if you had an honest currency, it would restraint the governments fighting wars and it would restraint the welfare state. But then in democracy, which is not exactly the best form of government when majority rules and once you can get a combination of people getting together and 51% say we want stuff from the government for free, then you get …

Jan Mickelson: They want Obama money.

Ron Paul: Yea, but the coalitions get together, there are conservative big government people and liberty big government people, so they say, “We’ll vote for your stuff, you vote for our stuff, and we’ll debase the currency.” So you shouldn’t have rigid laws against debasing the currency and having sound money. But you also have to have a people who are not demanding free stuff from the government, and you also have to have people in government that will respect the constitution. There’s no authority in the constitution for the welfare-warfare state. It’s because we have a lack of respect for the rule of law that really is the basic problem.

Jan Mickelson: Congressman Ron Paul is in the studio with us right now, we’re broadcasting live from the Iowa State Fair. I’m Jan Mickelson, you’re welcome to join us. The phone lines are open when we come back following our (?). If there is a question or comment you’d like to raise, join us right now. He participated in the debate last night, if you stayed up and watched it. His entourage, his group, was most loud and vociferous and supportive members of the audience.

Ron Paul: But polite.

Jan Mickelson: Okay, I’ll go with my vociferous. Right after our (?) we’ll reconvene the conversation as we broadcast live from the Iowa State Fair.

Broadcasting live from the Iowa State Fair, I’m Jan Mickelson and you’re going to hear another one of these Ron Paulisms from last night.

Ron Paul: Iran does not have an air force that can come here, they can’t even make enough gasoline for themselves, and here we are building up this case just like we did in Iraq; build up the war propaganda. There was no Al-Qaida in Iraq, and they had nuclear weapons and we had to go in, I’m sure you supported that war as well.

Jan Mickelson: You got the bell, yea, you got the bell. They dropped the bell on you, man.

Ron Paul: Yea, but Santorum was also nodding yes. Somebody told me, I didn’t actually see him, but they think he was nodding yes, he supported the Iraq war.

Jan Mickelson: The term you were trying to struggle for, because I don’t like the term isolationism, I don’t have any trouble killing communist. But we didn’t have to go to South East Asia to do that, we should have invaded Wisconsin.

Ron Paul: Well, I’m not quite with you on that, I’m a little bit more moderate.

Jan Mickelson: Okay, alright, maybe we should have just sent them some harsh words then. I don’t have any trouble killing Islamic terrorist either, but you, actually at one time, before we sent armies, you actually invoked another part of the constitution saying, “Letters of marquee and reprisal”, as I recall, saying we don’t have to send out a whole army to take out Saddam, just send a handful of contractors.

Ron Paul: I think it was a fantastic suggestion by the founders for smaller wars and targeting a few individuals that maybe attacking us. They did this with the Pirates and since I did not believe any one country attacked us on 9/11, that was a perfect time for us to try marquee and reprisal. And we didn’t get very far with that, but instead we didn’t endorse war but we allowed the president to do whatever he wanted, and look at where it has led us. And I don’t think there has been any good that has come from all that.

Jan Mickelson: Did you ever sit in on any of the intelligent briefings on some of the stuff?

Ron Paul: No, I don’t, I don’t on purpose, because it’s all propaganda. They don’t tell you what’s really going on behind the scenes, they have those things to pump up the war fever. Some of the individuals, you take a friend of mine who was for the war and now is strongly against the war, Walter Jones, he would go there and listen to this and he’s angry still because he said they told him a bunch of lies and he endorsed the war and he can’t forgive himself because it tears him up to see what kind of individuals are coming back; the broken individuals, the injured, the amputees. But he said that the war was based on lies, so these briefings … that’s one reason why I don’t go, you don’t get the information. But the other thing is if you go and you say something, then you could be in trouble because it’s supposed to be secret information. But I’d rather read it on the internet then I wouldn’t have to worry about violating ..

Jan Mickelson: You’d wait for WikiLeaks.

Ron Paul: Yea, I’ll just go read it on the internet and I could get probably more information and better information than you would get from a briefing.

Jan Mickelson: So you don’t trust yourself, eh?

Ron Paul: No, I don’t trust my government at times, that’s what I don’t trust.

Jan Mickelson: People here in Iowa will kind of bristle at that, because we’ve kind of grown up with the idea of boy scouts, eagle scouts, guarding the country. And even if a president that we don’t like and agree with particularly said something, we’d say, “You know, he’s not going to lie to us. And our government might be idiots, but they’re not liars, they wouldn’t lie”.

Ron Paul: But lying might be a little strong, but dependency and trust is gone, and I suspect the people in Iowa are part of that 17% who say now that the government does not have the authority to do what they’re doing, they do not have the consent of the people. That’s the lowest it’s ever been and that is healthy, because the people are waking up and this is what’s going on with the independent movement and the Tea Party Movement and they’re saying, “We don’t trust either of the two parties, or the current government, and therefore we have to do something else, something different.

Jan Mickelson: (?) described the mood of the American people as pre-revolutionary. 6% of the American people approve of Congress, that’s your branch of government.

Ron Paul: Yea, well, I don’t even call it pre-revolutionary because we coined the word and I happen to have a book out that the revolution is ongoing, it’s an intellectual revolution, it’s changing, it’s miraculous. The interest that is shared now in central banking and the Federal Reserve, the change in attitude about our foreign policy … last night it was said that the loudest applause came when I said, “It was time to bring the troops home and save trillions of dollars”. So no, the revolution is there and it has to be an intellectual revolution in order to prevent the violent revolution. But what we’re doing – and you described a little bit earlier today the anger that was expressed against Romney yesterday – we have to deal with that because that is anger and that will be violent and that is what we should work so hard to prevent.

Jan Mickelson: Do you think that there is potential for British or Greece or Spanish style or English style civil unrest in this country if we have more economic disruptions?

Ron Paul: Absolutely. You remember the 1960s, I’m sure, and there was a lot of violence in the 1960s.

Jan Mickelson: But that wasn’t economic based.

Ron Paul: No, but the American people are capable that when they get angry, they can get violent.

Jan Mickelson: There were two levels of violence in the 1960s; there was the anti-war stuff, and that was mainly from the left who didn’t like our commitment and what we were doing in South East Asia; and then you had the race riots in LA, and that was just people …

Ron Paul: But I think that means that they can do it. But these revolutions that are going on around the world are very much economic, it’s tied into the dollar reserve standard and many times it’s over food prices. When the prices of food go up and they can’t afford it, then they will rebel against the government. And most of them aren’t saying the right things, they’re demanding, like that person did to Romney, “Don’t you cut this, we want this, and how are you going to do it, how are you going to give me what I am entitled to?” That’s very dangerous. So this is why you have to deal with it.

Jan Mickelson: That’s what democracy looks like, that’s what they were saying in Wisconsin, and that’s what they’re saying here at the State House; people jumping up and down, “We’ll show you what democracy looks like”.

Ron Paul: That is why we are compelled to convert the people’s attitude about rights and entitlements. Entitlements are not rights and we’re back to the concept of liberty and that is where you win the battle. And this is where I’m very encouraged, because I think a lot of young people are recognizing this and they can’t depend on the government. So I consider it very healthy that they do not believe the government has the consent of the consent of the people and they also know the government can’t deliver. And some of the people on the left are actually realizing this, some get very angry, but a lot of them now are looking at our views more closely, especially when we can prove that the welfare system, bail out the rich and stick it to the poor … And you look at the housing, I use that example, they bailed out the rich and the bankers and Wall Street, and at the same time the people lost their jobs and lost their homes. So the welfare system doesn’t work and in truth, pure democracy is very dangerous.

Jan Mickelson: We’re talking with Congressman Ron Paul. Frankly, folks, you’ve made me do all the work this morning and I’m asking all the questions. I like to do that because I like to hear myself talk, I’m a talk show host. However, if you would like to be part of this conversation, we have one last segment remaining, and you can evaluate how you think the debate went last night, or any of the ideas expressed so far. 284 -1040 or 800-469-4295 as we broadcast live from the Iowa State Fair. We have one last segment with Congressman Ron Paul who spoke last night to a very, very enthusiastic reception at the debates. Looks like you have lots and lots of people who are going to be at the straw poll, what do you predict? And it is obvious that you did extremely well in the debate last night, who else did well, do you think?

Ron Paul: Well, what I predict is you’re right, a lot of people are going to show up. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go.

Jan Mickelson: Oh, common now.

Ron Paul: I felt good about last night and you mentioned that earlier on that one thing that you’ve noticed is that others are starting to use some of our language about whether it’s printing too much money or even a softer stand on our militarism around the world. So I feel very good about that, but it remains to be seen what will happen tomorrow. But I’ve said that I expect to do better than we did 4 years ago, I’ll be very disappointed if I don’t, but I’m in no position to say, “We have them lined up and we know exactly where we’re coming in.”

Jan Mickelson: Well, the other side, the people who are observing you are kind of concerned, they say, “Hey, that Ron Paul guy has sold 4500 tickets”.

Ron Paul: Is that true? I mean, I didn’t know about that.

Jan Mickelson: Yes. Well, that’s the rumor.

Ron Paul: That’s wonderful. Will that be enough votes to win?

Jan Mickelson: I have no idea.

Ron Paul: I don’t either, I haven’t kept up with that, all I do is give my same speech I’ve been giving for a long time.

Jan Mickelson: Well, if the noise level is a test, your guys outnumber the candidates’ supporters in the room last night. People were asking, “How did these people get in here?”

Ron Paul: That’s nice to hear. But the one place where I do enjoy making the point where I outnumber the other candidates, is raising funds from the military personnel. Because, you know, at times they question my foreign policy and whether I’m loyal to the troops, but they’ve shown, especially in this last quarter as well as what happened in the last campaign, I can raise more money from active military personnel than all the rest of the candidates put together.

Jan Mickelson: Newt Gringrich last night came close as any of the other people on the stage to having the same attitude about the Federal Reserve as you do. He said, “In a modern society, you can’t go back to a gold standard”, that’s what he implied. How would you argue against that observation?

Ron Paul: In a modern society you can’t depend on paper money, that’s the biggest thing. Paper money doesn’t work. The market will dictate that, it’s not me, it’s not my theory, but the markets for 6000 years have always gone to something of real value. So the market will dictate it and that’s why they’re going to gold, and gold is so high in dollar price because the dollar is being devalued. But no, he came out pretty strongly, I even complement him, I said, “You had a better chance to defend the Audit the Fed Bill last night than I got last night”. So I said that is very good. Of course, he took a softer stand on, “We still need a central bank”, but I even conceded there, which is my position, that you don’t close the central bank down in 1 day. But what we need to do is legalize the constitution, allow the people to use gold and silver, don’t put people in jail because they use gold and silver coins in their transactions. So I think we’re gaining a whole lot on that issue and that’s going to continue that way because our economy is in bad shape.

Located your write-up really interesting indeed. I actually experienced examining it therefore you make really some fantastic points. I’ll bookmark this web-site to the potential! Relly terrific article.

You and I and countless others obviously want education, roads, and security, so we don’t need a government to extract money from us to provide them since we’d pay for them anyway. Not to mention that the government has a monopoly on all of the things you mentioned, so the quality sucks ass. If the government had provided all food for hundreds of years, you’d be crying out wondering where the food would come from without institutionalized theft.

You and I and countless others obviously want education, roads, and security, so we don’t need a government to extract money from us to provide them since we’d pay for them anyway. Not to mention that the government has a monopoly on all of the things you mentioned, so the quality sucks ass. If the government had provided all food for hundreds of years, you’d be crying out wondering where the food would come from without institutionalized theft.

Large companies use the political system as a tool to pay for politicians to make regulations in their favor. Taxation IS immoral; the majority of citizens and a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats have NO right to tell me how I have to spend my money, even if this robbery is “permitted” in a fancy document written hundreds of years ago. I’m far from right wing, because I actually believe in true freedom. I’m done replying, I sense that an appeal to morality is a waste of time on you.

Large companies use the political system as a tool to pay for politicians to make regulations in their favor. Taxation IS immoral; the majority of citizens and a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats have NO right to tell me how I have to spend my money, even if this robbery is “permitted” in a fancy document written hundreds of years ago. I’m far from right wing, because I actually believe in true freedom. I’m done replying, I sense that an appeal to morality is a waste of time on you.

biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. What evidence do you actually have that the government was responsible for any company failing?, The problem with you right-wingers is you ignore important things….such as facts. Taxation is objectively immoral? What nonsense is that? You don’t think that people who are making billions, that they could never possibly spend all to themselves in their life don’t have a moral duty to give even a small portion to those who have nothing?

We are not living under capitalism in the US. Not when we have a centrally planned, pathetically failing currency, government controlled interest rates, big bailouts, stifling “regulations” bought by corporations to eliminate competition, the existence of TAXES, and the fact that the government builds roads and other things that have completely turned our society topsy-turvy and created an artificial and unsustainable infrastructure set to collapse upon itself. Oh, and WARS.

We are not living under capitalism in the US. Not when we have a centrally planned, pathetically failing currency, government controlled interest rates, big bailouts, stifling “regulations” bought by corporations to eliminate competition, the existence of TAXES, and the fact that the government builds roads and other things that have completely turned our society topsy-turvy and created an artificial and unsustainable infrastructure set to collapse upon itself. Oh, and WARS.

9:14 am: "ooo wow nice attempt at a ad hom! Did the reds steal the election from you? Where is McCarthy when you need him? Am I right?" - JBrown

Email Updates

Embrace liberty & stay in the loop

Sign up to receive free email updates from the RonPaul.com grassroots with the latest news, videos and liberty action alerts.

Disclaimer

RonPaul.com is maintained by independent grassroots supporters of Ron Paul. Neither this website nor the articles, posts, videos or photos appearing on it are paid for, approved, endorsed or reviewed by Ron Paul or his staff. For Ron Paul's official websites, visit the RonPaulLibertyReport.com and the Ron Paul Institute.